Abstract
The achievements of the little-known Scottish mathematician John West (1756-1817), deserve recognition: his Elements of Mathematics (1784) shows him to be a skilled expositor and innovative geometer while his manuscript, Mathematical Treatises, unpublished until 1838, reveal him also to be an accomplished exponent of "continental" analysis, familiar with works of Lagrange, Laplace, and Arbogast then Little studied in Britain.
First an assistant at St. Andrews University in Scotland, West then worked in isolation in Jamaica, combining mathematics with the duties of an Anglican rector. His life and his pastoral and mathematical works are here described. (C) 1998 Academic Press.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Volume | 25 |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 1998 |
Keywords
- analysis
- geometry
- series
- astronomy
- Scotland
- Jamaica